Ireland: Class Actions Law Review 1st Edition Ireland

I INTRODUCTION TO CLASS ACTIONS FRAMEWORK

There is no legislative framework in Ireland to facilitate class
actions. However, multiparty or multi-plaintiff litigation does
occur and is often brought by way of 'representative
actions' and 'test cases'.

The legal basis for representative actions is set out in the
Rules of the Superior Courts,2 which provide that where
numerous persons have the same interest in a cause or matter, one
or more persons may sue or be sued or may be authorised by the
court to defend a matter on behalf of or for the benefit of all
interested persons. In addition to this legal basis, various
statutory provisions allow for a person or persons to sue in a
representative capacity. By way of example, Section 28 of the Civil
Liability Act 1961 allows an action for damages to be brought where
death is caused by a wrongful act, neglect or default. The action
may be instituted by the personal representative of the deceased or
by all or any of the dependants 'for the benefit of all the
dependants'.3

The basis for test cases is the inherent jurisdiction of the
court to make directions in respect of the trial of proceedings and
the duty of the court to ensure that its resources and the
resources of parties to litigation are not inappropriately wasted
by unnecessary duplication. Consequently, where a number of cases
have similar issues it is possible for one case to be selected as a
test case and the subsequent cases to be stayed pending resolution
of the test case. Multiparty litigation commonly arises in
financial services litigation, particularly in cases involving the
misselling of a financial product to a large number of consumers.
Cases involving latent defects in buildings caused by the use of
pyrite in the construction process that involve multiple litigants
have also been brought by way of representative actions or test
cases. Other examples of multiparty litigation in Ireland include
claims relating to army deafness, contaminated blood products and
tobacco-related illnesses.4

The Law Reform Commission has previously recommended (as part of
its Report on Multi-Party Litigation in 2005), that a formal opt-in
procedure be introduced. However, such a structure is yet to be
implemented.

The question of shareholders or unitholders in collective
investment vehicles having jurisdiction individually and
collectively through representative actions was considered in the
Thema Shareholder litigation in Ireland. The court held
that the correct plaintiff was the company and dismissed the
actions brought by the shareholders. It did so on a number of
grounds, including the rule in Foss v. Harbottle. A copy
of the ruling is available on courts.ie.

II THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Litigation funding is often considered in the context of
multiparty litigation. As the law currently stands in Ireland,
professional third-party funding is prohibited on the basis that it
offends the rules of maintenance and champerty that exist under the
Maintenance and Embracery Act (Ireland) 1634. While professional
third-party funding arrangements are unlawful in this jurisdiction,
the Irish courts have found that third parties who have a
legitimate interest in proceedings, such as shareholders or
creditors of a company involved in proceedings, can lawfully fund
them, even when such funding may indirectly benefit them.
Therefore, funding of representative actions by the class members
does not offend the laws of maintenance and champerty, as the class
has a pre-existing legitimate interest in the litigation.

The impact of the 1634 Act was considered by the High Court in
Ireland in a number of cases between 2013 and 2015 and was
considered again in 2016 in the context of the legality of
professional third-party litigation funding in the case of
Persona Digital Telephony Ltd & Another v. Minister for
Public Enterprise & Other. In that case an application was
made to assess the legality of a third-party funding agreement. The
plaintiff, Persona Digital Telephony Limited, was unable to fund
the proceedings. A professional third-party funder from the UK was
prepared to enter into a litigation funding arrangement. The
plaintiff sought a declaration from the High Court that the
litigation funding arrangement did not constitute an abuse of
process or contravene the rules on maintenance and champerty.

While the High Court had some sympathy for the plaintiff, it
affirmed that both maintenance and champerty are part of Irish law
and are torts and criminal offences. The High Court found that to
permit a litigation funding arrangement by a third party with no
legitimate interest in the proceedings would necessitate a change
in legislation and this could not be done by the High Court. This
decision was unexpected, given some obiter dicta comments
from the High Court in a judgment approving ATE insurance to the
effect that the laws have to be interpreted in the context of
modern social realities (Greenclean Waste Management Ltd v.
Leahy [2014] IEHC 314). Further, the High Court in SPV
OSUS Limited v. HSBC Institutional Trust Services (Ireland)
Limited, HSBC Securities Services (Ireland) Limited, Optimal
Investment Services, SA and Banco Santander, SA indicated that
litigation funding could be deemed by the court to be legitimate in
future as reflecting 'modern social realities'. The
plaintiff, Persona Digital Telephony Limited, appealed the decision
of the High Court.

Given the issues of public importance raised in the case, the
Supreme Court allowed the plaintiff to bypass, or
'leapfrog', the Court of Appeal in order to have the appeal
heard directly by the Supreme Court itself. The decision of the
Supreme Court is expected in 2017. A finding by the Supreme Court
that professional third-party litigation funding is lawful would
have an impact on multiparty litigation where often the plaintiffs
concerned lack the means to provide the funding required to
maintain the representative action or test case.

The decision in SPV Osus Ltd, referred to above, which
addressed the issue of maintenance and champerty, came before the
Court of Appeal in January 2017 for consideration of a related
issue, litigation trafficking. In this case a fund, Optimal
Strategic US Equity Ltd (SUS) was entitled to make a claim in the
US bankruptcy proceedings of Bernard Madoff.

In order to allow investors in the fund to trade their share in
the bankruptcy claim (which is allowed in the US), SUS set up a
special-purpose vehicle SPV OSUS Ltd (SPV) and assigned the
bankruptcy claim to it. The majority of the original investors in
SUS swapped their shares for shares in SPV and then traded the
shares in SPV to distressed debt hedge funds. SPV then issued
proceedings in Ireland against the custodian to the fund claiming
an entitlement to the net asset value of the investments of SUS as
at 30 November 2008.

The custodian challenged the standing of SPV to bring
proceedings on the basis that the assignment was contrary to public
policy, and should not be enforced for reasons of maintenance and
champerty. The High Court upheld the custodian's claim, holding
that the transaction was void, contrary to public policy, and
constituted trafficking in litigation.

The Court of Appeal gave judgment on 2 March 2017 upholding the
ruling of the High Court in full and dismissing the claim as
trafficking in litigation. The Court confirmed that, under the
rules of champerty, an assignment is unenforceable unless one or
more of the exceptional circumstances apply that would grant it
legality (for example, an assignment of a bare cause of action that
is incidental to the property transferred, or the assignment of a
debt), none of which applied in this case. The Court further ruled
that there was no requirement to prove an improper motive under the
principles of maintenance and champerty.

The judgment of the Court of Appeal acknowledged that public
policy has to move with the times, and that commercial practices,
which change with the times, must be taken into account.

III PROCEDURE

As mentioned above, multiparty litigation in Ireland may proceed
by way of 'representative action' or 'test case'.
There is no formal class action procedure in Ireland. A
representative action arises where one claimant or defendant, with
the same interest as a group of claimants or defendants in an
action, institutes or defends proceedings on behalf of that group
of claimants or defendants.

Representative actions will typically arise where the class
either has a pre-existing relationship with the main party, or
where the class is relatively small. Due to this, the more common
approach to multiparty litigation in Ireland is usually the test
case.

A test case can arise where numerous separate claims arise out
of the same circumstances. By way of example, in 2008 the
Commercial Court was faced with more than 50 individual shareholder
claims related to the fraudulent investment operations run by
Bernard Madoff. The Commercial Court exercised its inherent
jurisdiction in deciding to take forward a small number of cases
initially, as test cases. In this instance, it was decided that two
cases by shareholders and two cases by funds would be heard
sequentially as a first step and the Court stayed the other claims
pending the resolution of the four test cases.

A similar approach was adopted by the Irish Commercial Court in
relation to claims for the misselling of financial products that
were initiated by over 200 claimants against ACC Bank in 2010. Five
claimants' cases were heard as test cases and the remaining
claimants agreed that 'the outcome of the litigation will
determine the result of their claims, subject to the possibility of
a separate trial on particular and unusual facts different to those
in issue in these proceedings.'

i Types of action available

In order to bring a representative action there must be 'a
common interest, a common grievance and relief in its nature
beneficial to all.'5 There is sufficient 'common
interest' where the dispute involves joint beneficial
entitlement to property, such as customary rights or corporate
shareholdings. In contrast, the courts have refused to extend the
representative procedure to actions founded in tort, a point
emphasised by the Supreme Court in Moore v. Attorney General
(No. 2). Notwithstanding this pronouncement, courts have
occasionally entertained representative actions founded in tort
where the relief sought is injunctive. There is an analogous
prohibition on representative actions against individuals for
breach of constitutional rights.6

Test cases are not limited to any particular types of action.
However, in practice these procedures are typically utilised in
tort actions where a negligent act or misrepresentation has
affected a number of people who wish to have their rights
vindicated. For example, claims for the misselling of financial
products will often involve an allegation that the financial
service provider committed the torts of misrepresentation or
negligent misstatement.

The following limitation periods apply to the various causes of
action:

Tort claims: six years from the date
of accrual of the cause of action.

Contract law: six years from the date
of breach.

Claims for liquidated sums: six years
from the date the sum became due.

Personal injuries under negligence,
nuisance or breach of duty: two years from the date of the cause of
action accruing or the date the claimant first had knowledge, if
later.

Land recovery: 12 years from accrual
of the right of action.

Maritime and airline cases: two years
from the date of accrual of the cause of action.

Defamation: one year from the date of
accrual of the cause of action.

Judicial review: the claim must be
brought promptly and in any event within three months of the date
of the cause of action (the court can extend this period if there
is a good reason).

The period during which mediation takes place in a cross-border
dispute to which the Mediation Directive applies is excluded from
the calculation of the limitation periods.

The Law Reform Commission's Report on Limitation of Actions
2011 discusses the limitation of all actions (although property
claims are excluded). The Law Reform Commission recommended the
introduction of a limitation period of two years, to run from the
date of knowledge of the claimant for 'common law actions'
(breach of duty, negligence, contract and nuisance). The 'date
of knowledge' is the date from which the claimant knew or ought
to have known of the cause of action and 'knowledge'
includes both actual and constructive knowledge. Interestingly, an
'ultimate' limitation period of 15 years was also
recommended. It was proposed that this would run from the date of
the act or omission giving rise to the cause of action and there
would be statutory discretion to extend this limitation period. It
should be noted, however, that the proposals put forward by the Law
Reform Commission are not binding and to date none have been
implemented.

It is anticipated that the Financial Services and Pensions
Ombudsman Bill 2016 will be enacted in 2017. Of particular
significance for regulated financial service providers is that the
Bill proposes to revise the limitation period for bringing
complaints to the Financial Services Ombudsman (FSO) in certain
circumstances. Currently, the FSO has no jurisdiction to
investigate complaints where the conduct complained of occurred
more than six years before the complaint is made. The FSO has no
discretion to extend this limitation period. The new time limit
proposed extends the limitation period for consumer complaints in
respect of 'long-term financial services'. The definition
of a long-term financial service captures products or services
where the maturity or term extends beyond six years, and is not
subject to annual renewal.

The proposed revised limitation period for complaints in
relation to long-term financial services is either: six years from
the date of the act or conduct giving rise to the complaint; or,
three years from the earlier of the following two dates:

the date on which the consumer making
the complaint first became aware of the said act or conduct;
and

the date on which that consumer ought
to have become aware of that act or conduct.

For other short-term financial services, the limitation period
of six years is unchanged. It must be anticipated that multiparty
litigation, by way of complaints made to the FSO, could arise as a
result of the change to the limitation period.

ii Commencing proceedings

In order to litigate the various actions set out above, a person
must have sufficient interest in the subject matter of the action.
Provided a person has sufficient standing, that person may
institute proceedings. Alternatively, in respect of representative
actions, where a claimant or defendant has the same interest as a
group of claimants or defendants in an action he or she may
institute or defend proceedings on behalf of that group of
claimants or defendants.

In order to commence proceedings by way of representative
action, an application must be made to the court for an order
permitting the claimant or defendant to bring or defend the
proceedings on a representative basis. The application for such an
order will be grounded by an affidavit that lists each of the
interested parties who have agreed to be represented in the
proceedings. Each member of a class has to 'opt-in'; that
is to say that the court must be satisfied that each individual has
authorised the main party to represent them. Where the claimant or
defendant sues in a representative capacity, the endorsement of
claim is required to show the capacity in which the party is suing
or being sued.7 There is a strict requirement that the
parties must have the same interests in the same proceedings as
opposed to merely similar or 'common' interests. Any
judgment or order in the action will usually then bind all
claimants or defendants represented.

In order to commence proceedings by way of a test case, each
party must institute its own case and then one party becomes the
benchmark by which the remaining cases are resolved. Importantly,
however, each case is judged on its own merits (by a judge alone)
and the fact that causation is proved in the context of one case
does not necessarily guarantee the same outcome in all subsequent
cases unless the facts, liability issues and causation are
identical. The Irish courts take great pains to ensure that each
case is judged on its own merits, and this is seen to benefit
defendants, as plaintiffs are put to the expense of having to fully
prove their case despite the fact that numerous similar (but not
necessarily identical) cases may have already been determined. In
reality, however, if there has been a negative finding against a
defendant in a test case and liability has been established, where
there are numerous similar cases yet to be heard, a defendant (or
its insurers) will attempt to settle the outstanding claims unless
they can be distinguished in terms of liability, causation or fact
from the test case.

iii Procedural rules

The average length of proceedings in the High Court (from issue
to disposal), is two years approximately. This can vary, however,
depending on the complexity and urgency of the case.

The High Court has a separate commercial division, known as the
Commercial Court. This specialist court has extremely stringent
case management procedures in place and judgment is generally
delivered quite promptly. According to the Commercial Court's
own statistics, 90 per cent of cases that come before it are
concluded within one year.

iv Damages and costs

In representative actions, the plaintiff is entitled only to
declaratory and injunctive relief.8 The test case
plaintiff will have their award of damages judged on the merits of
their individual case.

Damages can be compensatory or punitive, for example:

General damages: compensation for
loss with no quantifiable value, such as pain and suffering.

Special damages: compensation for
precise financial loss, such as damage to property.

Punitive (exemplary) damages: awarded
to punish the behaviour of a defendant (rarely awarded).

Nominal damages: awarded where the
claimant has been wronged but has not suffered financial loss.

The level of damages that may be awarded is determined by the
court before which the action is brought; claims up to a value of
€15,000 are dealt with by the District Court, while the
Circuit Court deals with claims with a value between €15,000
and €75,000 (the upper limit is €60,000 for personal
injuries cases). Any claim with a value in excess of €75,000
is heard by the High Court, which has an unlimited monetary
jurisdiction. Choosing the correct court is a particularly
important step for a claimant as one can be penalised as to costs
by a court, where they receive an award of damages that does not
meet that court's jurisdictional threshold. Provided that court
is also of the opinion that the action could have been taken in a
lower court, it is permitted to award the typical costs of the
lower court action.

As noted previously, subsequent litigation following a test case
is often settled on the basis of the test case outcome and, in such
circumstances, an award of damages does not fall to be considered
by the court.

While there are no specific costs rules applicable to multiparty
litigation, costs 'follow the event'9 in this
jurisdiction (i.e., the successful party is entitled to recover its
costs from the unsuccessful party). Costs are ultimately a matter
of discretion for the court, however, and although this 'loser
pays' rule is the norm, it is becoming more common for
issues-based cost awards to be made. It should also be noted that
costs in this jurisdiction are usually awarded on a
'party-party basis'. This means that the successful party
is only entitled to recover the costs reasonably incurred by them
in prosecuting or defending the litigation. Recoverable costs are
usually anywhere between 50 and 75 per cent of the total costs
incurred.

Irish lawyers are expressly prohibited from charging fees by
reference to a percentage of damages awarded. Litigation lawyers
are permitted, however, to enter into arrangements known as 'no
foal, no fee' or 'no win, no fee' arrangements. These
are conditional arrangements with clients, where any payment made
at all by the client to the solicitor is conditional on the success
of the case. No foal, no fee arrangements are more common in
individual personal injuries claims than in commercial cases.

Multi-plaintiff litigation can also arise in the form of
complaints made to the Financial Services Ombudsman (FSO). The FSO
is a quasi-judicial body tasked with resolving disputes outside of
litigation. While parties to complaints to the FSO are permitted to
be legally represented at each stage of the complaints process, the
costs of such representation are a matter for the party who incurs
the costs to bear himself or herself and the FSO is not empowered
to award costs.

v Settlement

There are no rules of court to be followed in multiparty
litigation in Ireland. Where multiparty litigation is brought by
way of a test case, the test case effectively becomes the benchmark
by which the remaining cases are resolved. However, because the
subsequent claimants and defendants, are not parties to the
original litigation, they are not bound by the result of the test
case and are not party to any settlement agreement entered into in
the test case. Although not bound by the result, the test case has
an effect by virtue of the doctrine of precedent. Therefore, the
benefits of the original ruling may be extended to cases involving
factual situations identical to those of the test case. As a result
of this, subsequent litigation is often settled on the basis of the
test case outcome.

Where multiparty litigation is brought by way of a
representative action, since representation extends to all aspects
of the legal proceedings, including settlement, the representative
has autonomy over the way in which the litigation is conducted,
subject to the expectation that he or she will act in the interests
of the class. Generally any judgment or order in the action will
bind all persons represented at the direction of the court.
Representative actions therefore presuppose a level of confidence
between the representative and the members of the
class.10

A settlement agreement between parties to litigation is a
binding contract and, subject to the ordinary rules of contract
law, the parties are free to choose to enter into and agree the
terms of a settlement agreement. Court sanction is not required for
a settlement save where the case is one in which money or damages
are claimed by or on behalf of an infant or a person of unsound
mind suing either alone or in conjunction with other
parties.11

IV CROSS-BORDER ISSUES

The European Commission has previously recommended that all
Member States adopt collective redress schemes, for both injunctive
and compensatory relief. This Recommendation was published on 11
June 2013 and deals with 'mass harm situations'. 'Mass
harm situations' are defined as those where two or more natural
or legal persons claim to have suffered harm from the same illegal
activity carried out by another person (whether natural or legal),
in breach of their EU rights.

Other issues discussed in the Recommendation include: funding,
legal fees and legal costs, standing to bring a representative
action; cross-border disputes; alternative dispute resolution and
damages. Although the Recommendation is not binding, it can be
applied to shape future legislation in the area.

When it comes to forum shopping, Ireland may be seen as a less
attractive option for class actions due to the lack of a legal
framework facilitating class actions; however, in numerous
forum non conveniens challenges to jurisdiction in New
York and Florida, the US courts have dismissed US class actions in
favour of Ireland.

V OUTLOOK AND CONCLUSIONS

More than 10 years has now passed since the Law Reform
Commission recommended that a formal procedural structure be put in
place to deal with multiparty litigation; however, this
recommendation has yet to be implemented and does not form part of
the government's current legislative programme. The absence of
a formal structure does not seem to have impeded multiparty
litigation in this jurisdiction and, in the absence of legislative
reform, it can be anticipated that multiparty litigation will
continue to proceed on the basis of test cases for the foreseeable
future.

Multiparty litigation and litigation funding are issues that go
hand in hand as plaintiff lawyers claim that the absence of rules
permitting litigation funding restrict their clients ability to
obtain access to justice. The law on litigation funding in Ireland
has been subject to considerable clarification in recent years, and
the Supreme Court's decision in the Persona Digital
case, which is expected in 2017, will have a significant impact on
multiparty litigation in Ireland, irrespective of its outcome.

Footnotes

1 Sharon Daly and April McClements are partners at
Matheson. The authors would like to thank Valerie Sexton for her
contribution to this chapter.

This service is completely free. Access 250,000 archived articles from 100+ countries and get a personalised email twice a week covering developments (and yes, our lawyers like to think you’ve read our Disclaimer).

Email Address

Company Name

Password

Confirm Password

Position

Mondaq Topics -- Select your Interests

Accounting

Anti-trust

Commercial

Compliance

Consumer

Criminal

Employment

Energy

Environment

Family

Finance

Government

Healthcare

Immigration

Insolvency

Insurance

International

IP

Law Performance

Law Practice

Litigation

Media & IT

Privacy

Real Estate

Strategy

Tax

Technology

Transport

Wealth Mgt

Regions

Africa

Asia

Asia Pacific

Australasia

Canada

Caribbean

Europe

European Union

Latin America

Middle East

U.K.

United States

Worldwide Updates

Check to state you have read and agree to our Terms and Conditions

Terms & Conditions and Privacy Statement

Mondaq.com (the Website) is owned and managed by Mondaq Ltd and as a user you
are granted a non-exclusive, revocable license to access the Website under its
terms and conditions of use. Your use of the Website constitutes your agreement
to the following terms and conditions of use. Mondaq Ltd may terminate your use
of the Website if you are in breach of these terms and conditions or if Mondaq
Ltd decides to terminate your license of use for whatever reason.

Use of www.mondaq.com

You may use the Website but are required to register as a user if you wish to
read the full text of the content and articles available (the Content). You may
not modify, publish, transmit, transfer or sell, reproduce, create derivative
works from, distribute, perform, link, display, or in any way exploit any of the
Content, in whole or in part, except as expressly permitted in these terms &
conditions or with the prior written consent of Mondaq Ltd. You may not use
electronic or other means to extract details or information about Mondaq.com’s
content, users or contributors in order to offer them any services or products
which compete directly or indirectly with Mondaq Ltd’s services and products.

Disclaimer

Mondaq Ltd and/or its respective suppliers make no representations about the
suitability of the information contained in the documents and related graphics
published on this server for any purpose. All such documents and related
graphics are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Mondaq Ltd and/or
its respective suppliers hereby disclaim all warranties and conditions with
regard to this information, including all implied warranties and conditions of
merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement.
In no event shall Mondaq Ltd and/or its respective suppliers be liable for any
special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting
from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence
or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use or
performance of information available from this server.

The documents and related graphics published on this server could include
technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically added
to the information herein. Mondaq Ltd and/or its respective suppliers may make
improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described
herein at any time.

Registration

Mondaq Ltd requires you to register and provide information that personally
identifies you, including what sort of information you are interested in, for
three primary purposes:

To allow you to personalize the Mondaq websites you are visiting.

To enable features such as password reminder, newsletter alerts, email a
colleague, and linking from Mondaq (and its affiliate sites) to your website.

Mondaq (and its affiliate sites) do not sell or provide your details to third
parties other than information providers. The reason we provide our information
providers with this information is so that they can measure the response their
articles are receiving and provide you with information about their products and
services.

If you do not want us to provide your name and email address you may opt out
by clicking here .

If you do not wish to receive any future announcements of products and
services offered by Mondaq by clicking here .

Information Collection and Use

We require site users to register with Mondaq (and its affiliate sites) to
view the free information on the site. We also collect information from our
users at several different points on the websites: this is so that we can
customise the sites according to individual usage, provide 'session-aware'
functionality, and ensure that content is acquired and developed appropriately.
This gives us an overall picture of our user profiles, which in turn shows to
our Editorial Contributors the type of person they are reaching by posting
articles on Mondaq (and its affiliate sites) – meaning more free content for
registered users.

We are only able to provide the material on the Mondaq (and its affiliate
sites) site free to site visitors because we can pass on information about the
pages that users are viewing and the personal information users provide to us
(e.g. email addresses) to reputable contributing firms such as law firms who
author those pages. We do not sell or rent information to anyone else other than
the authors of those pages, who may change from time to time. Should you wish us
not to disclose your details to any of these parties, please tick the box above
or tick the box marked "Opt out of Registration Information Disclosure" on the
Your Profile page. We and our author organisations may only contact you via
email or other means if you allow us to do so. Users can opt out of contact when
they register on the site, or send an email to unsubscribe@mondaq.com with “no
disclosure” in the subject heading

Mondaq News Alerts

In order to receive Mondaq News Alerts, users have to complete a separate
registration form. This is a personalised service where users choose regions and
topics of interest and we send it only to those users who have requested it.
Users can stop receiving these Alerts by going to the Mondaq News Alerts page
and deselecting all interest areas. In the same way users can amend their
personal preferences to add or remove subject areas.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file written to a user’s hard drive that contains an
identifying user number. The cookies do not contain any personal information
about users. We use the cookie so users do not have to log in every time they
use the service and the cookie will automatically expire if you do not visit the
Mondaq website (or its affiliate sites) for 12 months. We also use the cookie to
personalise a user's experience of the site (for example to show information
specific to a user's region). As the Mondaq sites are fully personalised and
cookies are essential to its core technology the site will function
unpredictably with browsers that do not support cookies - or where cookies are
disabled (in these circumstances we advise you to attempt to locate the
information you require elsewhere on the web). However if you are concerned
about the presence of a Mondaq cookie on your machine you can also choose to
expire the cookie immediately (remove it) by selecting the 'Log Off' menu option
as the last thing you do when you use the site.

Some of our business partners may use cookies on our site (for example,
advertisers). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies and we
are not aware of any at present that do so.

Log Files

We use IP addresses to analyse trends, administer the site, track movement,
and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not
linked to personally identifiable information.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Mondaq (or
its affiliate sites) are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other
sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read
the privacy statements of these third party sites. This privacy statement
applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Surveys & Contests

From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or
contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and
the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose any information
requested. Information requested may include contact information (such as name
and delivery address), and demographic information (such as postcode, age
level). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes.
Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the
functionality of the site.

Mail-A-Friend

If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about our
site, we ask them for the friend’s name and email address. Mondaq stores this
information and may contact the friend to invite them to register with Mondaq,
but they will not be contacted more than once. The friend may contact Mondaq to
request the removal of this information from our database.

Security

This website takes every reasonable precaution to protect our users’
information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, your
information is protected using firewalls and other security technology. If you
have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an email to
webmaster@mondaq.com.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information

If a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as postcode),
or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavour to provide a way
to correct, update or remove that user’s personal data provided to us. This can
usually be done at the “Your Profile” page or by sending an email to EditorialAdvisor@mondaq.com.

Notification of Changes

If we decide to change our Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policy, we will
post those changes on our site so our users are always aware of what information
we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner
different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by
way of an email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their
information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with
the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

How to contact Mondaq

If for some reason you believe Mondaq Ltd. has not adhered to these
principles, please notify us by e-mail at problems@mondaq.com and we will use
commercially reasonable efforts to determine and correct the problem promptly.